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Enrollment in post-college Roman Catholic seminaries dropped by 4 percent in the past year, according to a new report from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
Researchers found 3,285 American priest-candidates studying at seminaries in the current academic year. About 30 percent planned to enter religious orders, and the rest were candidates of dioceses.
Enrollment in the college-level category was less than 1,300, the lowest number since the center began collecting statistics in 1968.
U.S. Catholicism has struggled for decades to stem a decline in the number of priests.
In the last academic year, about one in five seminarians was from another country, the report said.
